The Media And Political Theater

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

The continued coverage of the problematic revitalization of the reflecting pool in D.C. is “The Dumbest Expression of T.D.S.”  I hesitate to call it “political theater” because the inception of the project was genuine, the problems have arisen in the execution and media coverage has made it controversial.  It is not a genuine scandal in any real sense, no politician made it happen for the sake of capturing headlines.  “Clickbait” is probably the best term for it, but it is politically motivated clickbait as media clearly intends to use it to embarrass the president.  But politicians are learning from the media.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani’s threat to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu should have been a non-story from the outset.  The idea that a municipal mayor in the United States of America had the authority to arrest a foreign head-of-state is ludicrous on its face.  It was ludicrous even before it exited his mouth.  Has the man never read the Constitution?  And even if in some alternate parallel universe he had such authority, to sacrifice our national sovereignty to an international court is treasonous.  The threat was either an act of madness or of political theater.  His recent admission that he lacks the authority strongly points to the latter alternative.

The real culprit in this drama is; however, the media.  They gave the threat coverage as if it had any substance.  Once again their desire to embarrass Trump overrode their sense of what was and what was not news.  To call this particular story clickbait is to dishonor clickbait.  This story played not only into the media desire to embarrass Trump but into the collective ignorance of their readers.  The stories kept coming because the readers kept coming.  When will we learn to turn away from such drivel?  I never read, nor  watched, any coverage of the threat because it was so obviously a work of fiction.

But it is funny how the media fails to cover itself.  Does anybody remember the president’s address from last week?  It was a pretty brazen political speech by the president, but it did contain a couple of remarkable and news worthy assertions.  Chief among them:

“The Chinese government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. president and pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him, as many as they could, and they didn’t care what they said.”

That sounds preposterous on its face, doesn’t it?  But let’s think about it for just a minute.  Disney owns ABC.  Disney has partnered with China to produce films (the live-action version of Mulan) and produced movies very much for the Chinese market. (Shang-Chi)  Chinese money very clearly lands in the hands of the media conglomerate that owns a major news organization. Not so preposterous after all.

And yet the media has not even bothered to refute the story that I am aware of.  You would think they would want to clear themselves of such an outrageous charge, particularly when the charge is leveled by the President of the United States.  Instead we have a silence that speaks volumes.

But then I am sure they have have decided the president’s allegation is as ludicrous as Mamdani’s threat.  But then why so much coverage on the latter and none on the former?

However one chooses to answer that question, one conclusion is obvious.  Our media is no longer a reliable source of information and being a good citizen is much harder than it used to be.